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Posts Tagged: Java 6 Update 39

At a time when Apple, Mozilla and other tech giants are taking steps to prevent users from browsing the Web with outdated versions of Java, Yahoo! is pushing many of its users in the other direction: The free tool that it offers users to help build Web sites installs a dangerously insecure version of Java that is more than four years old.

Yahoo! users who decide to build a Web site within the Internet firm’s hosting environment are steered toward using a free tool called SiteBuilder, which is designed to make building simple Web sites a point-and-click exercise. Yahoo! has offered SiteBuilder to its millions of users for years, but unfortunately the tool introduces a myriad of security vulnerabilities on host PCs.

SiteBuilder requires Java, but the version of Java that Yahoo! bundles with it is Java 6 Update 7. It’s not clear if this is just a gross oversight or if their tool really doesn’t work with more recent versions of Java. The company has yet to respond to requests for comment.

But this version of Java was first introduced in the summer of 2008 and is woefully insecure and out-of-date. Oraclejust released Java 6, Update 39, meaning that SiteBuilder installs a version of Java that includes hundreds of known, critical security vulnerabilities that can be used to remotely compromise host PCs.

Oracle Corp. has issued an update for its Java SE software that plugs at least 50 security holes in the software, including one the company said was actively being exploited in the wild.

The original Critical Patch Update for Java SE – February 2013 had been scheduled to be released on February 19th, but Oracle said it decided to accelerate the release of this update because of active exploitation in the wild of one of the vulnerabilities.

“Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply…fixes as soon as possible,” the company wrote in an advisory.

I couldn’t find a definitive account of which zero-day vulnerability in Java had caused Oracle to move up its patch schedule, but recently researchers have uncovered flaws in a mechanism that the company shipped with the previous version of Java that was designed to thwart attacks on the program. With Java 7 Update 10, Oracle introduced a mechanism that would require users to manually allow the execution of Java code not digitally signed by a trusted authority. Some security experts praised Oracle for adding the feature because it promised to drastically reduce the success of attacks that exploit security bugs in Java, but researchers have shown that the new feature can be easily bypassed.